Spring 2021 exhibitions

The Henry Art Gallery is pleased to announce the museum’s public reopening on March 6 with six new exhibitions and free admission through June 2021.

This year, the Henry will dedicate a substantial portion of its programming to the Feminist Art Coalition (FAC), a nationwide initiative of art projects that seek to generate cultural awareness of feminist thought, experience, and action. Overall, the Henry program remains committed to creating a dynamic space for presenting and amplifying a multiplicity of voices, communities, and people.

Exhibitions will be activated through a wide range of virtual programs, including curator conversations, film screenings, artist workshops, intergenerational art activities, and collection-related programs. In-person and offsite programs will continue to be held in compliance with state and health regulations. 

Together, the Henry’s exhibitions and programs will provide a hybrid platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue, both within the museum and in the greater community.

Exhibitions:

Bambitchell: Bugs & Beasts Before the Law is an experimental essay film and installation by Bambitchell, the artistic collaboration of Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Kyle Mitchell that explores the history and legacy of the animal trials that took place across medieval and early modern Europe. Bambitchell’s project animates how power is performed through the body of the other, revealing the ways authorities and institutions mediate social relations and subjecthood through such processes as the formation of property and the criminalization of sexual difference. On March 18, the artists will present Dolphins, ships and other vessels, a virtual performance reading that expands upon their research into the legal frameworks that govern nonhuman animals and objects, moving from the territorial jurisdictions explored in Bugs & Beasts Before the Law to the legal realm of the sea.

Hostile Terrain 94 is a participatory art exhibition created by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), directed by UCLA anthropologist Jason De León. The installation renders the human consequences of “Prevention Through Deterrence” policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, while also promoting both global and local discourse on migrant labor, detention, and other intersecting topics through collaborative programs with community partners.

Illustrating Injustice: The Power of Print highlights the impact of printed material to communicate social and systemic injustices, and features work by French lithographer Honoré Daumier and American photographer Danny Lyon from the Henry collection, as well as a selection of late 20th-century newsletters from the Washington Prison History Project.

Across painting, photography, and sculpture and a range of artistic strategies from abstraction to documentary, Plural Possibilities & the Female Body aims to create a counterpoint to persistent myths and essentializing projections about femininity and gender norms. The artworks on view take up questions of power and self-possession in relation to pleasure, desire, and acts of looking, as well as challenge traditional conceptions of beauty and a fixed gender binary.

Viewpoints: A Dialogue Between Jean-François Millet and Jeanne Dunning features representations of women and domestic labor in nineteenth-century prints by Jean-François Millet and the video Icing (1996) by Jeanne Dunning. Viewpoints is a rotating series that highlights works from the Henry’s collection, paired with commentary and insights from University of Washington faculty.

We Own Our Words, in close partnership with educators from Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS), is a creative writing zine featuring original poetry, essays, short stories, and drawings by Breanna, Chelsea, Fermina, Lisa, Sabrina, Shawn, Shellie, Sheryl, Soy, and Tatïana, who are all currently incarcerated at Washington Corrections Center for Women. Echoing the grassroots prison publications that are included in Illustrating Injustice: The Power of Print, the zine opens channels of communication that disrupt the dehumanizing isolation strategies systematized within carceral institutions.

Learn more about exhibitions and programs at henryart.org.